


After me : Chapter 1 A Day Alike any Other

by Kleiner_Ghost



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Novel, Original Fiction, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25429366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleiner_Ghost/pseuds/Kleiner_Ghost
Summary: Imagine a word much alike our own, a word where written history is integral to progress.Now imagine the worst that could happen to this world; a cataclysm that shaking it to its core.But natural disasters cannot explain the disappearance of written records, can they ?This world called Amaranth is where Limbie was born. She loved her home more than anything, but she always dreamed of reaching for the stars. She needed nothing more than a rumor to swirl down a perilous route to uncover the truth and rebuild the future of her world.





	After me : Chapter 1 A Day Alike any Other

The sky was shimmering red, as per usual. Below the billowy pourpre clouds, wheat fields were paying their respects to all the dead of the land. The small and noisy hovercraft, on the other hand, disregarded those tombs and flew towards a blue column of light. It stood there, piercing the horizon while the four passengers of the ship were actively fighting for dialogue. The pilot, Gren, and RP, the engineer, were trying to maintain the ship in a semblance of flight. The other two passengers, Limbie and Myth were having an intense debate. One was actively denying that the state of the vehicle was her fault by giving figures and occasionally producing diagrams while the other was trying to prove to her teammate that Kodi was going to ask Rimi out any day now. When the pilot interrupted their discussion to inform the Lieutenant of their progress, she side-tracked from her drawing and begun explaining why Ianne, aka that smug gold bitch should be fired from the courts.

It must have become obvious to the reader at this point that none of those four people were actually able to understand one another and were much less qualified to partake in any mundane mission. Nonetheless, the Lieutenant of the White court continued her monologue about her Gold counterpart. She seamlessly fused this to her previous topic of malfunctioning equipment. Indeed, was it not Ianne’s fault that the White court didn’t even have a proper name until 3 months back, not to mention the absent founding. And she wasn’t even commenting on the mess her predecessor left behind. 

“Half the bloody HQ was blown up! And all the form I’d to fill. Bloody hell. They were all written in beast. I mean, yes, it is the official administration language, but no one bloody speaks it anymore.”

She went on and on, while the pillar got closer. It was no longer piercing the horizon but rather supporting Ophelia, the larger moon.

This pillar was in fact a portal. Well, to be precise, the disc formed by the base of the pillar and the surface of Amarath was a portal. They appeared every so often and spat out miscellaneous creatures. It was all fun and games until they appeared over some villages. Of course, thanks to the extensive influence of both Gold and Red courts, the casualties were differentiated and equalised to zero.  
Inside the disc, a towering, slimy and multi-limbed creature was grasping onto air. Alike a fish out of water. It defended against the strokes of dozens of tiny needles. Every so often, the needles would change their angle of approach. The creature would then struggle even harder. It was no longer fighting for air. It was fighting for life itself. Being still somewhat sentient, it focused really hard and finally spotted the epicentre of its afflictions. A crunchy looking dot at the edge of the cage of light.

That dot, being no other than Sendig, the lieutenant of the red court, cold be described by many adjectives. Crunchy not being one of them. He was keeping an eye on the creature while ordering his troops around. Piercing through that wall of limbs was not an easy task. No matter under what angle he attacked it, the creature seemed to suffer more from the surrounding air than the sharp projectiles desperately hitting against its scales.

On its left flank the creature had less limbs than on its right side. Red had already tried directing his forces over there. Pointless. All this combat was pointless. He could stay here all day, demonstrating more and more creative formations. The Creature wouldn’t budge; its skin seemed to be made of stone. And platoon 1 and 3 were starting to tire out. However, Sending learned the hard way that even stone can fracture and crumble to nothing if given enough time. In an annoyed attempt to end this encounter, Red sent some men to attack the creature's head. Among them, three were fended off by hulking tentacles before even reaching the scaled head. One, for better or worse, managed to scratch the smooth knob. However, that scratch was enough, the relentless efforts of the squad had finally payed off. Not in an expected way, though. The creature threw its head back, as if stricken with demonic laughter. What up until now was considered as an unfortunate scar, slit open and nearly swallowed the soldier. Sendig could work with that. He had a way of getting inside the creature and striking it from there. Meticulously slashing its artery one by one before finally lighting its heart on fire. However, the lieutenant wasn’t ready to take any risks.

“Caporal” he called a man “then minutes. Then you evacuate. And call team D-03. For decontamination.” clarified the older man. The caporal man nodded.

Sendig turned to the creature. Holding one of his discs, he began to advance towards the pillar of light. One of the tentacles was restraining a soldier. Without taking the time to aim Sendig projected a metal-like disk towards the slimy limb. Neatly sectioned, it fell on the ground next to the unconscious man. By the time the projectile returned to its owner, Sendig had already sent out a couple more of the razor sharp weapons.

“T minus 7” informed caporal’s voice through an ear-piece.

Everything was going according to plan. The lieutenant smiled while advancing towards the beast. 

Suddenly a ray of white light struck the creature. It pierced its scales and melted its guts. The ray vanished. Blood dripped from the wound, like rain from a rooftop. The creature didn’t scream. It emitted no noise. None. A large hole was now embellishing its side, but the monster remained dead silent. It slowly turned what was left of his head and fixed the Red lieutenant. At this instant, only one though filled the lieutenant’s mind. He did not care for his own life anymore. Nor did he care for his men. Contamination. Should any foreign fluid only brush against one of his men, they would be doomed.

“Hey, old man” a glitchy female voice pierced through the air. “so, you did not call for us, which is understandable since no one takes my squad seriously. Yet here we are. Tadaa” 

Sending could almost feel the goofy smile on his younger colleague’s face. But he had no time to dwell on it. The creature was slowly melting away. Red soldiers were anxiously waiting for orders. For most of them, fluids emitted by the creature were lethal.

“1 to 3, retreat. 4, enclose defenses on the hovercraft. 5, keep it distracted.” Red spat in his earpiece. 

The creature’s attention was now fully his. Still silent, the octopus would not divert its multiple eyes from the small individual. The latter had reached an impasse since the wound was way too big to be cauterized by his discs.

“4, 5. Any openings on the creature?” he couldn’t do it by himself, but he would if the need was to come.

“4 here, negative.”

“5, did you copy?” sending will give them another minute. He wasn’t seeing the White brat anywhere yet, but he knew she was close.  
“Kid, you fucked up royal this time.” He muttered into nowhere.

“5 here, we might have an opening. Permission to use Burin-Gletsley’s cos’ “  
The creature tried grappling the lieutenant and lost more tentacles in the process. It seemed however distracted, projecting most of its limbs in the air. He was uncomfortably close to it. Close to the point where he could feel the heat emanating from the beast’s body. The fluids were dripping and streamed away, saturating the ground.

“5 here, update on request?” Elvish cos’s’ were always bad news. And the wound did not seem as big from up close.

“so, gramps” the still glitchy voice broke through the background static. “I suggest you get your old ass – “

“5, permission granted”. Anything but Limbie fucking things up even more. Anything.

Flames swallowed the creature, cracking its skin but most importantly cauterizing the wound. Its tentacles began lifelessly falling onto the ground, one by one. but the light in the creatures eyes was not gone yet. The flames vanished as swiftly as they appeared. Red was about to let out a sigh of relief when he saw, high up in the sky a small, fluffy, figure. The feeling of helplessness and despair that flashed through his eyes at that moment was beyond description.

Up in the sky, submerged in the unholy blue light emitted by the portal, Limbie observed as the creature below her lit ablaze. Its defenses were failing, and as the fire begun to disperse, she took her chance and dived towards her target. Runes begun to appear around the staff she was flying on. They formed concentric circles, illuminating her grin.

Then her target moved. Which it clearly wasn’t supposed to do cuz it was a fucking giant octopus.

Correcting her trajectory, the girl hastily landed on solid ground, behind the creature, as she observed as the top half of the beast slid then heavily flopped onto the ground. On the other side, lieutenant red violently caught several of his returning discs. They reassembled in their usual formation, allowing the man to rest on them.

“Hey gramps” Limbie saluted her colleague. “so is your life boring to the point where you started sucking the fun out of everyone else?”

Under the tranquil red sky, drones were lazily cleaning the area. There were doing so in the carefree way of someone who doesn’t know what else to do of his afternoon. The tentacles and their remains were gently put into the singular mobile chimney and their ashes fueled the drones themselves.

Most of the equipment and some of the men had already departed. With enough effort, or a good pair of binoculars, red’s hovercrafts could still be seen somewhere hear the horizon. 

Among the remaining man, one was energetically arguing with RP about the hard drive superiority of the Ch-4.0 over the Ch-3.9 mobile chimney. RP was holding his grounds, assuring his companion that unnecessary complexity does not automatically equal superiority and that production costs should not be disregarded, especially when dealing with handmade models.

The utensil in question had no regard for this discussion and slowly wondered off as soon as the drones fed him the last of the monster’s limbs. Sendig patiently waited as the white lieutenant dismissed her squad, confiscating Myth’s gun, as instructed, in the process. He waited for platoons 1 to 3 to leave too. His sight absently rested on the giant chimney, slowly making its way through the high grass. Moving it’s right leg first, then it’s left one before stabilizing it’s elongated body whose balance was offset by scraped pipes and polished docking stations, before repeating the process, the chimney gracefully sank through the wheat fields.

“Lieutenant. Should I do a report on Burin-Gletsley and his cos, or could we let this one slide for the sake of, well, time.” A young woman stopped Sendig’s daydreaming.

“Caporal, a member of your platoon used his cos’ in combat. Thus, it should be included in your report that a member of your platoon used his cos’ in combat.” The lieutenant said so slowly, and gently, as a parent who’s already used to explaining the same concept to his children over and over again.  
The young woman saluted her superior, turned around and walked away, accentuating each step. However, a couple of minutes later, she returned.  
“Lieutenant. On the behalf of my men, I see no need to report B-g’s intervention because it had no impact on the battle outcome. I, I mean, on the behalf of my squad, I see no need to mention such a brief intervention, especially if we take into account his, umm, background choices?” 

“Background choices?” asked the lieutenant with a smirk. “Is that boy part of the SOR group? because if he is, Caporal, he has no place in my court and if he isn’t you should have no issues with your redaction.” 

“He doesn’t have his cos’ number tattooed, sir.” She woman stated bluntly. “That doubles the paperwork. And with all due respect, that pile of certificates and id lists thickened considerably because of White’s intervention.” Caporal lowered her tone gradually, whispering the last part. However, it didn’t prevent an annoyed “That’s lieutenant White for you, young lady!” from echoing in the background.

“I am older than her, sir.” The Caporal stated in a whisper. “Back to the issue at hand, sir, the contamination was avoided -”

“Let me stop you there. Are you saying that we should not faithfully document this battle only under the pretext that we succeeded at our jobs?”

“Sir. With all due respect, my men are tired- hell- I am tired, I do not want to spend the next week writing about how BG laziness to get his cos’ has led to game changing decisions.” At this point, the young lady was pleading more than she was asking.

“Caporal.” Sight Sendig. “If you need inspiration to fill all those blanc pages, you can talk about the devastating consequences a biological contamination would have had. You can describe in detail how the troll’s skin would decolorate and start peeling off when in contact with water. You could mention the effects of foreign fluids on the Sikounen psychological stability, and the visual and auditory hallucinations that occur if they don’t cleanse themselves. You could even illustrate your words with very explicit diagrams.”

Caporal’s expression was a mix of curiosity and disgust. She wanted nothing to do with trolls fragile constitution and all the illnesses that could hit them, and the idea of mentally unstable Sikounen scared her. However, she was tempted to throw this whole report and its unnecessary diagrams to hell and get home a couple of days early.

Seeing that his interlocutor went silent, Sendig continued:  
“At least, that’s what I used to do in my rookie days. Now, caporal, you are dismissed.”

“But-” bullshitting on the report sounded tempting, but not tempting enough. “- sir, I don’t see much difference between including unnecessary, umm, imagery, and not mentioning Burin-Gletsley’s cos at all.”

“Maybe you don’t see a difference, but I do. Rules were established for a reason. And I would like you to follow them.” Sendig was going to continue, but he noticed the white Lieutenant catching a drone and attempting to tape it onto an unstable looking gun, so he had to cut the conversation short.  
“Dismissed.” He stated to the caporal and begun making his way to the younger girl all while trying to call her off.

A certain tranquility settled gently over the battlefield. Both lieutenants were walking about, tracing runes on the ground and chatting. The older man was schooling his younger counterpart about actions and their expected consequences while the younger girl drew circles and nudges and nodded to the conversation in a distracted manner. Nothing much could have been taken away from this interaction apart from the usual “don’t call me an old man” and “then stop calling me kid, gramps”.

When the two lieutenants had finally circled around the battlefield, all but one ship had left. Conveniently, it was the fifth platoon packing up the last of their unused guns. Some soldiers were cleaning their blades, other were storing away their armor – which by the way kid, is completely against protocol – while a few were chatting with their caporal. One man in particular, a young boyish looking troll was complaining about their firearms and how they didn’t get to use them. He, you see, was trained as a sniper and did not expect this sort of methodology in combat. 

“Ya see kid, these guns they ain’t got fire in them. If ya shoot the beast, the wound it’s gonna bleed. And y’ain’t want that.”

The argument was nowhere near solved but Limbie interfered, nonetheless.  
“You know, we’re working on it. My Court and I.” she rested her hands on her hips, in an authoritarian fashion. “And frankly it would be nice to have some support from other members of the community.”

“Kid, stop with your propaganda” Smirked Sendig and approached the group as well.

The debate of firearm utility continued after lieutenant red order his man to pack away while Lieutenant white had left to finish the runes circle.  
From where she was, Limbie could only hear bits of the conversation. It seemed to have taken another turn. An elf, Bugley, as his colleagues called him, was complaining about how things were easier in his days. No unpredictable portals, no monsters, no need for constantly updating unreliable and semiconscious technology. A brigadier was energetically venting the merits of said technology. They might have gotten in a fight, the friendly kind that ends with both parties stroking each other’s hair and laughing. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

It didn’t take long for the crew to finish packing up and silently flying away. Right as the lieutenant had finished her arcane work.

In the background, purple sparks sprouted from the ground. In a silent scream, the pillar of light was gone. As if it was never there.

Apart from the two figures placed on the ground and the noisy hovercraft hastily hurrying home, the fields of wheat stood one again undisturbed. They were bowing yet again under the heavy wind. 

“Hey, old man.” The younger lieutenant called out.

“What do you want kid?”

“What’d happen to us if the portals stopped appearing? like in the old days, whatever that’s supposed to mean.” Limbie approached her companion and sat on her hovering staff so as to be at eye level with him.

The older man smirked. “oh, don’t worry kid, they find some new problems. These people. They don’t need as much as an excuse to start a war.”

“Don’t mistaken, I’m all for massacre and mindless genocide” she trailed off “I’ mean, ain’t they got anything better to do? Like farming, or raising children?”

Sending smirked softly. “Kid, people are bored. That’s why so many of them are joining our courts. Haven’t you heard that hot headed elf from earlier? The world is at rest; thus, our souls seek clamour. It is just the way thing work down here.”

“Mhuum. Anyhows, ‘d you like a lift home old man?”

“On that flying calamity of yours?”

“We could ride one of those elephant monsters.” She winked at him and he grinned.

“You will be the death of me, kid”. He shifted onto the staff, his disk armour transferring to his back and shoulders.

There was nothing left in the faithful wheat fields to testify against the fight. No one was mourning the shapeless creature that fell by the hands of Lieutenant Sendig. Only one moon attended the funerals. Ophelia tearlessly wept. She watched with her lone eye over the monster, and all those before him asleep for all time, deep, deep within the wheat fields.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there strangers.  
> I decided to publish the first chapter of the first draft of my novel to see what king of a reaction it would get. Don't worry about the overabundant spelling errors, those should disappear with the second draft. 
> 
> Please do tell me what you thought of this first chapter, even if you hated it.


End file.
